


Simplicity of Comfort

by Macx



Series: Denuo [65]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Magic, Paranormal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-13
Updated: 2011-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-19 08:49:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macx/pseuds/Macx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>episode tag to Burned Out with a Denuo twist</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simplicity of Comfort

He closed the door behind himself, every step an effort. The pain behind his eyes was merciless, blinding, and the light was like agonizing little stabs right into his brain. He closed the blinds and walked unsteadily over to the couch. Carefully he lowered himself down, moving like an old man. He felt old. Everything hurt. His brain was ready to explode. His head felt like it would just split at the seams and let that happen.

Sinking back he moaned silently at the on-going noise. People arguing and screaming and talking and walking loudly by his office. There were shadows playing against the frosted windows. He wanted to just tune it all out, make it disappear. He prayed for the medication to work, to take away the pain, the blinding agony of this migraine.

Every thought hurt.

Every little notion of grasping reality had him wince and wish for relief.

So he stopped thinking, blanked his mind, wanting nothing more than the darkness of sleep.

Time went by and he was dozing, fitfully and never completely relaxed. His muscles were cramping in his neck and shoulders, and the pulses behind his eyes never truly disappeared. They would dull a little, turn into an almost bearable pain, but every slammed door or loud yell would let it spike.

Time passed and passed, and he lost track of it. The noise started to dilute and maybe it was the medication or maybe it was just his exhaustion. The blankness of his mind turned into a sluggish recollection of the past day. It was painful to remember, to see what he had seen once more, to again look into the wide blue eyes of Carl Fisher as he explained that he was innocent.

Nausea rolled through him and Gil Grissom almost blindly groped for his medication, dry swallowing two more pills. He didn't even really open his eyes, just far enough to fumble with the prescription bottle and realize that the lights outside had dimmed even more.

It had to be between shifts.

A moment of utter peace in the lab.

He closed the slits again and sighed softly, the lines between his eyes still not easing. Migraines happened. They simply happened and he had to go through them, suffer the pain, and let it all finally go away in a dizzying spell of relief and his mind struggling out of the abyss it had fled into.

Grissom wondered if the others had missed him, if anyone had seen him go in here, if someone who came to the office took the closed blinds as a hint. Brass knew he was suffering from these blinding attacks of agony, had seen him take his pills. Maybe he had warded everyone else off.

Maybe he had drifted off again, maybe it was even sleep, but the next thing he realized when he came to was an almost-touch to his forehead. It felt like a cool, feather-light caress and suddenly something seemed to flow through him. It was non-invasive, and maybe he was dreaming, but the fog in his mind was lifting. He blinked, still in the almost dark office, and felt his muscles relax. Warmth flooded his neck and shoulders, undoing the knots and cramps, and finally there was just… this good feeling.

No more migraine.

Grissom blinked, slightly confused, and then he truly registered that there was someone else in the room. Someone who now looked at him out of narrowed eyes, the thin lips drawn tight into silent criticism, and if Grissom hadn't been so confused he might even have snapped a remark. So he just stared.

"Go home."

He sat up slowly, still not trusting his body to be truly migraine-free, but he felt good. Really good. It was the first time he had felt this power coursing through his body. He knew Nick had had a more intense experience before and all Grissom had allowed himself to be was a watcher.

"What did you do?" he asked softly, though he had a suspicion.

"Helped out. It was painful to be around you. Go home, Gil. Everyone's already gone, the dayshift is just trickling in, and Nick's still haunting the lab, worrying about you."

"He should have gone home," Grissom murmured.

Conrad Ecklie, Assistant Director of the Crime Lab, almost sneered. Only almost. Right now the AD wasn't here. This was Conrad Ecklie the shaman looking at Grissom. A friend. This was a private moment and all facades had been dropped.

"He should have. He didn't. Go figure. I told him to leave when I found him here when I came in, but your partner can be very stubborn." Ecklie quirked an eyebrow.

Grissom glanced at his wrist watch. It was just six. Ecklie was early.

"And before you ask, I have a home and a bed," Ecklie added. "I also have a mountain of paperwork. Now go."

Because he had taken more and more time off work to train his shamanic powers. It was a slow process and whatever Ecklie was doing to explain it to the Director of the Crime Lab, it worked. Maybe there was some fancy ally footwork involved as well. Grissom hadn't really kept track of those matters. There had been too much on his own plate to deal with.

Grissom got up, swaying a little with the after-effects of what he had been put through. The pain might be gone, but the memories were still there. Violence against children was an Achilles' Heel. He despised child molesters and pedophiles were even worse. He was aware of Ecklie close by, almost hovering, and he felt the protective power of the shaman, too. He didn't comment on that, but his criminalistic mind was pondering it.

"Thanks," he only said as he walked past Ecklie.

"You're welcome."

Grissom stopped at the door, turning back to meet the dark, intense eyes watching him carefully. "How did you know?"

Ecklie tensed briefly, then shook his head with a wry smile. "Can we leave it at this being a shaman thing?"

Grissom looked at him. Ecklie was strong, had proven that in the past, and apparently the fine tuning was working. Gil nodded briefly, then he left. The light outside didn't hurt, though it was rather bright after staying in the dark room for so long. He walked down the corridor, looking for Nick, his mind pondering the 'shaman thing'. Nick had told him a few things that had happened in the past, and Grissom knew what Ecklie had done for the two of them, what he had done for Nick and still did. And he remembered what Nick had told him about Ecklie finding him when he had had his panic attack in the lab. Ecklie's senses were aware of the two paranormals working in the labs and he somehow kept an eye on them.

So he had come to Grissom's office and used a little of his power to help Gil with the headache, the migraine. Grissom was thankful and he felt a whole lot better with the pain gone, but the physical exhaustion was still there. He felt burned out.

Nick was talking to someone from the dayshift who had come in early when Grissom found him. Their eyes met and Nick gave the dayshift guy a smile and a nod, then headed over to Grissom.

"Hey."

"Hey," Gil answered softly.

"I'm driving."

No argument there. Grissom fell in step and they walked into the garage, Nick using the remote to open the doors of his black Tahoe.

The sun was already out, which made actually no difference in Las Vegas except that the neon lights were out and for the first two hours of the new morning, it was mostly rush hour traffic that crowded the streets. The tourists would come later.

Nick navigated swiftly through the main roads and onto the one leading out of the city and toward the more quiet suburbian area where they had bought their house. Grissom had his eyes closed, drifting into a light doze throughout the drive, and he suppressed a yawn when Nick pulled into their driveway. The sun was brighter now, the sky clearing from hazy to a deeper blue, and it promised to be a nice day.

Grissom didn't care.

He just wanted to be home, to be alone with the one person who meant the world to him, and he wanted to close his eyes and fall asleep. Without dreams. Without seeing Carl Fisher or the dead body of Lucas Hanson. He would see enough of that in the days to come as he wrote and signed reports, or when it came to the trial.

Nick almost wordlessly moved around him as he stripped off his clothes and took a shower, then slipped into his boxers and shirt for bed. Grissom felt so tired, so at a loss as to how to handle this exhaustion because he had never been hit by a case like that.

"Gil?"

The soft question had him look up. Gil became aware that he was still sitting on the bed and that everything inside him ached and longed for something he couldn't put his finger on. It wasn't the ache of the migraine and it wasn't even physical. It was something else. He crawled into bed and curled an arm around his lover's waist. When Grissom laid his head on the broad chest, he felt gentle fingers comb through his graying hair. Nick's other hand was drawing non-descript patterns on his back.

Some of the inner tension started to slip away. This strange something inside of him seemed to shiver and uncurl, snuggling closer to Nick on its own, and when Stokes shifted a little to accommodate him better, everything felt suddenly right.

He sighed softly, with content, eyes sliding shut. He began to drift again, but not into the abyss of memories. It was nicer. A lot nicer.

* * *

Across town, hours later, a shaman and a vampire shared lunch in the vampire's office at the Inca Hotel and Casino. Ecklie had removed his tie, had taken off his jacket, and he should be relaxing in the comfortable atmosphere of being alone with his partner. As it was, his mind was elsewhere.

"Conrad?"

The gently coaxing question had him look up and into a pair of sea gray eyes that were filled with a teasing light.

"Not hungry?" Franklin asked.

Ecklie looked at the sandwich he was holding – had been holding ever since the first bite a few minutes ago.

"No. It's not the food."

"It's Grissom?"

That got Franklin a frown. "You a mind-reader?"

"No. I just notice things. Like you talking about him needing time off."

"He does. The last migraine attack told me so. It was bad, Franklin. If he doesn't take care, he'll burn out."

The vampire nodded.

"He needs to take a sabbatical," Ecklie added. "Soon. Or it'll hurt Nick, too."

Franklin chewed on some crunchy chips and washed them down with a gulp of soda. He balled up the small chips bag and tossed it away.

"I could recommend a few nice spots to really unwind."

Ecklie smiled. "I'll let him know. Right now I need to get him to accept the possibility of a time out first."

"Get Nick on your side."

That got the blond a smile, but no comment. Ecklie finished his sandwich and then prepared to get back to the PD. Franklin took the tie and tied a professional knot, stealing a kiss in the end.

"See you tonight."

"Tonight," Ecklie promised, then grabbed his jacket and left again.

He was still thinking about how to get Gil to take a few weeks off when he got back and into his office where work was waiting for him.

Well, there would come a chance. He knew that. And he would get Grissom to take this sabbatical. He was a shaman and he wouldn't let anyone under his care run himself into the ground, not even a Phoenix.

* * *

Grissom woke to an empty bed and found that he had slept deeply and dreamlessly. From the smell of coffee, Nick had been up a while. He took a shower, shaved, then dressed in his home clothes, which consisted of leisurely outfit of pants, a t-shirt and keeping his feet bare. He walked into the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee, then looked for his partner. He found Nick outside, on the terrace that stretched into the back garden.

"Hey, you're up," Nick greeted him. "You okay, Gil?"

Grissom placed his cup on the small table and pulled the younger man into a kiss. Nick responded softly, wrapping an arm around him. Grissom noticed a lot of things about Nick. His warmth, his aftershave, his shampoo, his taste, the coffee he had drunk… Grissom deepened the kiss, wanting to taste it all, and he felt Nick moan into the contact.

When they finally parted, Nick was breathing harder, eyes darker than their normal chocolate brown.

"Wow, what brought that on?"

Grissom smiled and placed another kiss onto the slightly swollen lips. "I just felt like it," he answered.

Nick chuckled at that, still in his embrace, and Grissom enjoyed it immensely. He had been reaching out for his lover more frequently lately, the job getting to him more and more in a way he had never expected. Things were piling up and he felt himself lose control of his reactions to it all.

"Gil?"

He looked into the liquid brown depths of his partner's eyes, felt the strong hand on his back, rubbing over it.

"Nothing," he answered.

It was the truth. There was nothing yet, but maybe, just maybe, he had to confess to the truth that he needed some distance. From work, not from Nick. He was actually seeking more closeness.

Nick watched him, then silently accepted the 'nothing'. "Breakfast?" he offered.

It would be more of a lunch, but Grissom just nodded.

"Go somewhere or stay home? I think we got some stuff for pancakes."

"Stay," Gil only answered.

He didn't want to leave the sanctuary of their home until he had to go to work, tackle the last case, look at it all again, and move on into the next one.

"Okay. Wanna lend a hand?"

Grissom smiled and followed his lover inside. For now he would forget the stress and the pain. This was just for them.


End file.
